Day: November 30, 2022

On 01 November 2011, history was made— a little-known son of Africa would take over perhaps the largest agricultural research institute on the African Continent. That person was Dr. Emmanuel Nteranya Sanginga, who would become the first African-born Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria.
Before his assumption of office, IITA was 44, and the leadership had been in the domain of Europeans and Americans.
This heroic appointment came with mixed feelings—on one side, there was the fulfillment that, alas, one of our own—an African— is a director general, but on the other side, there was the apprehension on whether an African will lead and deliver without sinking the ship.
It is worth noting that at the time Dr. Sanginga took over leadership, the world had just come out of the 2008 food crisis, and global attention was in the direction of fighting terrorism. Donor funding to agriculture dropped, and the agenda was on how to track down Osama bin Laden—a key plotter of the attack.
In the days that followed his assumption in office, most of us cautiously watched how this new director general would navigate this difficult terrain.
On the domestic front, Dr. Sanginga faced a staff strength with low morale—most of whom came to the office because they had no other source of livelihood. On their faces, one could perceive the handwriting with the inscription: “I am just buying time. I will soon quit”. The next thing that would follow was the massive resignation of scientists, signifying all wasn’t well. As the number of voluntary resignations swelled, Dr Sanginga passed the task to his subordinate. Of course, this wasn’t cheery.
Then came his famous message to staff: “What changes, what remains… and how can I be part of it?” This was a very reassuring message to staff and a morale booster. The key takeaway from the message was that things would be better if we all worked for the common good of IITA. He also opened doors to staff and was willing to take advice from both the high and low.
I must say that while there were issues with staff morale; infrastructurally, IITA was not better. The institute had not caught up with the rapid advancement of science in terms of infrastructure. In addition, some of the research facilities had depreciated –the buildings inclusive.
I had the privilege of being one of those to organize an IITA reunion to be held in Ibadan. As part of the feedback we received during a reflection session, one of the alumni said: “We came to supervise the final burial of IITA.” His words mirrored the degradation and indignation IITA had become.
On top of this layer, IITA had lost investments—no thanks to a Ponzi scheme that was well calculated and implemented to the detriment of research in Africa.
To address these challenges, Dr. Sanginga led the development of a strategy that would later turn around the narrative of Africa’s biggest research organization, drawing over 800 insights from all categories of staff irrespective of professional classification.
The strategy, which I will talk about on another day, was people-oriented and prioritized research, partnership, capacity building, and impact on the farm level.
From the outside, this approach was criticized as taking IITA to the realm of development, but to us, in IITA, this was certainly what Africa needed—a de-emphasizing on research pilots to delivery at scale.
Through this strategy, IITA supported countries such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, etc., to transform their agricultural sectors. The institute was able to increase its annual budget by more than threefold from $40+ million.
Dr. Sanginga kept his promise of rewarding staff, increasing remuneration within the framework of current realities, and promoting exceptional brains. Today, IITA is on a better footing in research, delivery, and infrastructure.
As one of Dr. Sanginga’s mentees, I learned a lot of things that are already shaping my career path. Some of his nuggets are: 1. Never look down on anyone. 2. Never isolate yourself 3. Be the best in your profession. 4 Publish, publish, publish.

Source: African Science News

A nongovernmental organisation, Solidaridad, has partnered with Bungoma County government to undertake a five year project that is envisaged to increase coffee production.
The project aims at making Bungoma farmers more resilient to climate change, improve their quality of life and mitigate climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gases.
Mugo Kamau, the project officer said during the launch that that they settled on Bungoma because they have a good working relationship with the county government.
“In the five years that we shall been here in Bungoma, we shall ensure that we engage all farmers and enlighten them on climate change issues as many have no knowledge about climate change.
He said that climate change has ignited a global discussion and it needs experts to explain to the locals.
He also said that the five-year project seeks to unlock the potential of agro forestry in reducing the carbon footprint in the coffee supply chain. “Solidaridad also aims to innately trail the climate victims and turn them to climate heroes,” Kamau added.
He said that the organization will give a platform to farmers to learn new farming techniques, get new coffee prizes and what the ministry of agriculture is doing to support them.
“We can’t work alone, that is why I have involved the county officials from the ministry of agriculture and farmers from the nine constituencies of Bungoma to be part of this great engagement,” he said.
Kamau said that they will also train farmers on smart agriculture, and encouraged farmers to do agroforestry but practice alternative ways of sourcing funds that can support other activities on the farm.
“A part from planting coffee lets us also think of the economic aspect of the chain,” he said.
Kamau noted that his dream is to fight poverty and climate change by enabling millions of smallholder farmers to invest in carbon farming in ways that smallholder farmers will be transformed from climate victims to climate heroes.
Jane Mukonambi, the Bungoma County Director, Climate change lauded Solidaridad for considering Bungoma, affirming that the county government will give all the required support to benefit farmers.
Mukonambi said Solidaridad is not a new organisation revealing that it has worked in Bungoma before and its history can be traced. “Bungoma signed an MOU with Solidaridad before and what they did was very unbelievable that is why we have accepted and welcomed them back,” she said.
She said that Bungoma is also focused on ensuring that the forest cover is increased.
On November 25, Governor Ken Lusaka signed a Climate change bill that is expected to be presented before the floor of the County assembly of Bungoma. The bill if passed will see every ward net sh. 50M to address the climate change challenges.

Source: Kenya News Agency

Co-operatives Development Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui has challenged Baringo residents to venture into the lucrative dairy farming business.
Chelugui noted that the highland parts of the county from Eldama Ravine, Torongo, Tenges, Kabarnet up to Kabartonjo areas had a huge potential in milk production.
Speaking at AIC Kaptim where he presided over the official opening of the church sanctuary in Lembus Kwen ward Koibatek on Sunday, the CS urged the farmers from the area to move out of their comfort zones and invest more on quality breeds that could fetch them higher returns.
He said the region had the largest milk cooperative societies in the country including Kabimoi and Sabatia which used to receive over 11,000 litres per day but the capacity of the went down due to the mushrooming of other small entities from other regions.
“I am sure we can do very well especially in Koibatek because already the farmers were in the business for the longest time,” he said.
Chelugui who gave targets to dairy farmers in Sabatia, Torongo, Mumberes, Mwachon, Kiptoim and Mogotio said many investors were willing to support organized co-operatives only if they improved their milk production capacity to sustain such a venture.
He challenged Baringo county government to fast track the construction of a milk processing plant in Eldama Ravine which he said would go a long way in processing and packaging milk from the area and neighbouring regions.
Chelugui added that the factory, apart from embracing value addition, would also create more jobs to more than a thousand unemployed youth from the county.
The Cabinet Secretary accompanied by local MPs led by area legislator Musa Sirma stated that only three counties in the country are doing milk feeding programmes hence with such a facility they could develop a brand which could play a crucial role in feeding school children.
Area Senator William Cheptumo in his remarks urged residents to plan for their lives in advance by venturing into development programmes that could improve their livelihoods.
He assured residents that the county leadership is more united and willing to support them provided they showed seriousness and commitment in whatever socio-economic enterprises they were involved in.

Source: Kenya News Agency

Egerton University has launched a radio programme offering agricultural extension services targeting more than 200,000 small-holder farmers in Nakuru and neighbouring counties.
The initiative aim at providing need and demand based knowledge on how to improve on their food production, income and the quality of life.
Through live talk shows, phone call-in programmes, on location broadcasts, interviews with experts and airing of specialist programmes relevant to agribusiness, ‘Kilimo Bora Show’ is providing up-to-date information on agronomic techniques and skills to the rural farmers to help them grow food output by employing modern farming practices.
The three-hour programme which runs on Egerton Radio -101. 7 FM on a daily basis further enables the institution’s agriculture students to identify which farms to visit and offer practical extension services free of charges.
The “Kilimo Bora Show” was unveiled through sponsorship from Transforming African Agricultural Universities to Meaningfully Contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development’ (TAGDev) initiative. TAGDev is a partnership program between MasterCard Foundation and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM).
The Egerton University volunteer student extension officers have also been equipping farmers with information on improved seeds, timely planting, agroforestry, better harvesting methods, soil conservation, marketing, post-harvest handling and diversification.
One of the volunteer agricultural extension officer and a Master of Science Agricultural Business Management student at the University Maurice Simiyu said the radio show was a platform that provides farmers with access to accurate and real time information in terms of markets where they could sell their produce bridging the information gap.
‘Kilimo Bora Show’, he added provides an opportunity to farmers to participate and interact with each other and other relevant authorities like extension workers, crop and animal experts.
The program was also providing agriculture-related information such as weather forecast, prices of inputs such as seed and fertilisers, transport facilities, information on storage facilities and quantities and volumes traded at selected markets in the county, and across borders, Simiyu said.
The programming initiative, he added was set to help smallholder farmers who fall under the bracket of Small, Medium Enterprises (SMEs) improve on the standards and quality of production adding that the small-holder Farmers are producers of food and cash crops that account for 37 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Through the show and field visits we have been teaching farmers to desalinate water at the farm, using agriculture lime since saline water causes stunted growth and destabilises the soil acidity levels”, said Simiyu.
According to Simiyu, extension services plays a big role in ensuring food security, citing Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and Denmark, which he adds have very advanced agricultural sectors, courtesy of strong extension services.
He says outdated farming technologies hurt other sectors as funds meant for development are used to buy food to feed the hungry.
According to Simiyu lack of farmer training was one of the reasons Kenya found it difficult to address food insecurity and urged farmers to scale up the production of various food crops using modern farming methods.
“We can no longer rely on traditional methods of farming to meet the country’s feeding needs, it is high time all players in this sector employed modern practices that assure sustainable production,” he added.
Margaret Kiili, a Bachelor of Science, Animal Science student and a volunteer extension officer from Egerton University said reforms introduced by the World Bank through its Structural Adjustments Programmes of the 1980s led to the exit of thousands of public servants with Extension service workers being among the most affected, leaving a void that the volunteers are helping fill through ‘Kilimo Bora Show’ and subsequent field visits.
She says that unlike government extension services that were top to bottom, with agricultural officers promoting what they thought the farmer needed, the ‘Kilimo Bora Show’ and student volunteers are offering demand-driven information, which is timely and specific.
Ms Kiili expresses concern that the role of extension officers was increasingly being taken up by quacks on social media, misleading sales-persons from manufacturers of farm inputs and NGOs.
The volunteer has been engaging small-scale rabbit farmers on the best practices in rabbit rearing and value addition such as harvesting the animals’ urine that is an organic pesticide for vegetables.
She said with enhanced extension services that stressed on the need to maintain cleanliness in rabbit rearing cages, farmers have tripped their earnings through increased survival of newborns and a sharp decline on diseases and conditions such as coccidiosis, coughing, sneezing and watery eyes.
Due to scanty information, Ms Kiili notes that most farmers were found not to be practicing cage naming for ease of identification and record keeping.
“Courtesy of our radio show farmers now know that the rabbit cages should be well aerated as the animals survive well below 20 degrees Celsius,” she states
Research by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) indicate that the average extension officer to farmer ratio is 1:5000. This is way above the Food and Agriculture Organization requirement that each extension officer handles 400 farmers.
The study by JKUAT blames deteriorating extension service system on the officers sticking to obsolete skills in knowledge dissemination, their wanting skills and little passion at their job.

Source: Kenya News Agency

African economies have been urged to include food security, climate change mitigation and adaptation framework in the economic agenda.
The call was made during the African Economies Research Conference (AERC) 57th Biannual Research Workshop.
Speaking at the event, National Treasury and Economics Planning Cabinet Secretary (CS) Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u reiterated the need for governments across the continent to focus on protecting private investments, recovering the health infrastructure, education and nutrition as part of recovery from the multiple shocks.
“We can accelerate African economic recovery journey through collaboration and cooperation towards research that focuses on how to protect private investors, how to reinforce education, recover the health infrastructure, food security, and food markets, and how to develop, and protect markets to help our economies to recover from the current shocks,” Prof. Ndung’u said.
He also encouraged African economies to develop, regulate and even protect the markets as part of economic recovery.
He further challenged economic researchers to focus on domestic resource mobilisation and digital resolution in the African set-up.
In the last two decades, African economies have weathered multiple negative global shocks and remained resilient even when these shocks hit hard the core of key macroeconomic indicators. However, the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the war in Ukraine and climate-related shocks have caused permanent damage that could take years to mend.
“We saw the covid-19 pandemic that hit the entire world, but Africa was affected differently from the rest of the world, and today the most relevant issue is the war in Ukraine that is affecting the whole world but quite different on how Africa is being tested and we need to figure out solutions in our own way on how to tackle these many shocks,” said Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Chair of the AERC Board.
On his part, Acting AERC Executive Director and Director of Training Prof. Théophile Azomahou noted that the economic fundamentals of most African economies have not changed much in the last three decades.
He said that “the recovery from the shock that is taking shape runs the risk of being uneven, widening the differences within Africa itself and between Africa, and the rest of the world. The current debate focuses on how this can be avoided. Beyond the support already deployed, there is an urgent need to find lasting solutions to finance Africa’s economies. And, together, we need to chart a path to a more resilient recovery”.
“Investment, domestic savings, government revenue and economic structure remained unchanged, while factors such as urbanization, population and unemployment are rising. We observe an overstretched resource envelope to mitigate Covid-19, low productivity in agriculture arising from climate change, low value addition from manufacturing sectors and persistent trade barriers in the region that globally calls for new approaches in handling structural shocks. The outcome is declining economic activity, rising poverty and inequality, in fact, the Covid-19 has wiped the efforts in the last two decades or so on growth, fighting poverty and inequality. With low adaptation and implementation of dynamic structural transformation strategies emanating from lower capital accumulation, some of the development initiatives that could have spurred Africa out of poverty trap have been elusive,” Prof. Azomahou said.
The conference brought together high-level policymakers, researchers, media, economists, academics, and non-state actors in a lively mix of speeches, presentations, plenary and concurrent sessions.
The Biannual Plenary will be followed by the 58th conference next year where fully developed papers arising from the interactions with policy and decision makers will be presented to a wider community of researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. The papers will be published as a Working Paper Series of AERC as well as a special issue of the Journal of African Economies in July 2023.

Source: Kenya News Agency

Nakuru Governor Susan Kihika has advised businesses and individuals to embrace Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism as a way of resolving disputes with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), rather than turning to law and costly judicial processes such as tax tribunal.
While urging the tax man to create a friendly tax regime for the benefit of the country, Ms Kihika said shutting down companies over alleged failure to pay taxes was detrimental to the economy and in turn affected thousands of families whose bread winners are rendered jobless once such firms are closed.
The Governor said Tax agencies globally are embracing ADR mechanisms due to their ability to swiftly resolve tax disputes, adding that the ADR process was more flexible, cost-efficient, confidential and time-saving.
The process, she added, provides the parties with more control over the procedures for resolving the disputes and advised business community to always be tax compliant to avert penalties that accompany tax evasion.
Kenya ushered in the ADR mechanism regime in April 2015 as a way to fast-track the resolution of cases for taxpayers who disagree with the tax bills slapped on them. The ADR mechanism was largely seen as the first layer of resolving disputes arising from tax audits before they escalated to the Tax Appeals Tribunal and into courts.
Speaking after chairing a meeting between County Revenue Officers and a team from the KRA where talks centered on reopening of several businesses that were closed by the state agency over disputes on tax, the Governor explained that in ADR process besides negotiating the taxes payable, taxpayers could also negotiate a payment plan for the taxes.
“We were able to broker an agreement to fast track the re-opening of several Nakuru Businesses that had been closed due to disputes with the tax body as survival of KRA depends on the existence of income generating businesses from which it can collect taxes,” Kihika pointed out.
The Governor observed that although KRA was justified to collect taxes and that the companies have an obligation to declare and remit their taxes, stopping them from operations was not the right way to deal with tax evasion.
While noting that ADR was the best way to building relationships between the taxman and the taxpayers which leads to improved compliance, the Governor said that the biggest advantage of the process to the taxpayer was that he or she has control over the process and outcome since the alternative dispute resolution agreement was only binding when signed by both parties.
The ADR process was also described as being relatively cheaper than litigation as the legal fees paid to advocates and tax consultants are lower than the cost of litigation. Additionally, since there are no appeals where a settlement is reached, the parties save on the costs, which would have been incurred in the appeal.
At the same time, the governor appealed to businesses and firms operating in the County to take advantage of the three-year tax amnesty programme rolled out by KRA in January 2021.
According to official records from the tax man, 855 firms and 940 individuals have self-reported to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), in a race to take advantage of the three-year tax amnesty, which hopes to unlock billions of shillings from tax cheats.
KRA has however rejected applications from at least 540 firms seeking waivers under the Voluntary Tax Disclosure Programme (VTDP) with some applications being rejected because the income declared was earned outside the qualifying period of July 1, 2015, to June 30, 2020, while others failed to disclose some material facts.
Other applicants were denied the relief because they were under audit or investigation or were a party to ongoing litigation in relation to the tax liability.
The taxman says ADR recorded an 11 percent growth in revenue during the first half of 2021/2022, unlocking Sh10.4 billion compared to Sh9.4 billion collected during a similar period in 2020/2021.
The governor’s meeting also explored ways in which KRA’s Kenya School of Revenue Administration (KESRA) would equip County Revenue Officers with requisite knowledge on County revenue and expenditure, legal and institutional framework in revenue collection, and strategies for enhancing revenue collection.
The partnership with KESRA, observed the Governor would focus on revenue recovery and improving local audit capacity while strengthening tax compliance in the County.

Source: Kenya News Agency